Risk indicators for safety performance assessment of crane-operations in the chemical industry

In recent years, new risk analysis approaches have been developed to be applied in major hazard establishments. Amongst these, approaches associated with the overall concept of dynamic risk are the most relevant. The main reason for the diffusion of Dynamics Risk Analysis (DRA) is the need to integrate new notions, accounting for dynamics of phenomena and information on system changes over the time and/or the impact of innovative technologies, within risk assessment procedures. DRA approaches are particularly useful when assessing the risk due to the lifting of load, especially when hazardous substances are handled or in major hazard industries. The reason is the potential for loss of containment, which could be followed by catastrophic scenarios (such as fires, explosions and toxic dispersions). When carrying out a crane operation, a common hazardous situation, leading to accidents, is associated with the hindered view of the workspace for the crane-operator. At this regard, a recently developed real-time monitoring tool, named Visual Guidance System (VGS), can be used to assist the worker during the load lifting. It gives back an alarm, when a potential impact between the handled load and any obstacle in the workspace is occurring. Data’s collection, through the feedback provided by the VGS, allows deriving appropriate indicators correlated to the safety of crane operations in chemical industry. These indicators are continuously updated; therefore, they are useful parameters to be integrated within DRAs. This work aims at the definition of risk indicators for lifting and handling operations; the methodology to derive such indicators is described and an application is also given.